The British government is on a path to significantly overhaul copyright laws within the country. The changes will significantly affect fair use, including the ability to shift content that consumers have purchased from one format to another. The most obvious improvement to UK copyright laws comes in the fact that it will be legal to copy music from a CD to your iPhone for instance.

That sort of copying from one format to another is what the British government is calling format shifting. Changes in the fair use policy within the UK will also grant a copyright exemption allowing copyrighted works to be used in parodies or caricatures.

The British government says, "[It will] allow limited copying on a fair dealing basis which would allow genuine parody, but prohibit copying disguised as parody."

The British government will put the Intellectual Property Office in charge of "clarifying areas where there is confusion or misunderstanding on the scope and application of copyright law."

Another area that copyright reform will affect is education and research where the existing IP laws made it somewhat illegal for teachers to show copyrighted material on interactive whiteboards and via distance learning systems. With the new copyright reforms, this sort of use will be specifically allowed.